For SCO the end is nigh - DELISTED!

[greggh]

Courtesy of Groklaw

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?stor ... 7092646478

All those Mesirow and legal hours working on the SEC delisting did not pay off. SCO announces today that Nasdaq has sent them a letter. SCO will be delisted as of December 27. They found out on the 21st, it seems, but they tell us today. Here's the press release, where they once again describe themselves as "a leading provider of UNIX software technology and mobile services". Here's a shift:

SCO owns the core UNIX operating system, originally developed by AT&T/Bell Labs and is the exclusive licensor to UNIX-based system software providers.

Too bad they claimed so much more, because the end game isn't turning out to be so much fun for them. What is the moral of the story? I'd say it's that you can't stop Linux or FOSS with manufactured lawsuits. Oh. And don't sue IBM unless you actually have a case. I think we can all agree on that, after the lawyering we've been privileged to observe since 2003.

So, no more SCOX. It's SCOXQ.PK now, flatlined, PK meaning pink sheet. There is a bit more detail in the 8K filed with the SEC.

Here's the 8k on Yahoo!, followed by today's press release, followed by the press release SCO released the day they sued IBM back in 2003, for comparison purposes and for history's sake, and then finally a Google chart showing SCO stock from April of 2003 to the day before the delisting, December 27, 2007:

[snarkout]

Neener-neener.

[Tsuroerusu]

Would somebody please just wipe SCO out so we can move on?

[greggh]

SCO is now trading at 6.5 cents with a market cap of just $1.17 Million

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SCOXQ.PK

Up yours Mr. McBride!

[Simulcra]

I hope that whatever/whoever eventually buys SCO (cause that is most likely) they will continue to make such a great product. Seriously, aside from all the political stuff, they make a hellofa solid, light weight, UNIX. I've worked on POS systems that run OpenServer on as little as 64MB RAM, that run fast ans rock solid. It truly is a great product. I would love to see it become a truly Open "OpenServer".

[Tsuroerusu]

Seriously, aside from all the political stuff, they make a hellofa solid, light weight, UNIX. I've worked on POS systems that run OpenServer on as little as 64MB RAM, that run fast ans rock solid. It truly is a great product. I would love to see it become a truly Open "OpenServer".

Dude such systems exists today, it's called *BSD. I have an old AMD-K6 box with 64 MB of RAM, both FreeBSD and OpenBSD works great on that old thing (It's got ISA ports, talk about oldschool!).

[Simulcra]

No doubt. I know for a fact the OpenBSD does equally well if not a more superior job, but I was singling out SCO because of the post topic thats all.

[Tsuroerusu]

No doubt. I know for a fact the OpenBSD does equally well if not a more superior job, but I was singling out SCO because of the post topic thats all.

Fair enough. Well, I always welcome more free software so if SCO wanted to release OpenServer under GPLv3, I'd be very interested!

[Simulcra]

That is the single greatest thing that I can say I love the most about FOSS. It's ability to run so well on such meager hardware. It never ceases to amaze me that hardware 10+ years old still runs just as good or better than most hardware only a year old.

[Tsuroerusu]

That is the single greatest thing that I can say I love the most about FOSS. It's ability to run so well on such meager hardware. It never ceases to amaze me that hardware 10+ years old still runs just as good or better than most hardware only a year old.

Well think about it, newer versions of software is supposed to be better than the previous version, but requiring more powerful hardware is definitely not an improvement, in fact it's a giant step backwards, because it means that the software won't work for some users. In the corporate proprietary* world, it makes a lot of sense to make software (Hint: Windows) require more powerful hardware, because that helps the OEMs (Hint: Dell, HP etc.) sell more hardware, even to people who already own a machine that works perfectly. But corporate interests, in the proprietary world, very rarely directly cross paths with user interests, and because the user is not in any sense in control because of the lack of freedom, well, it's just a dead end. In the free software world, everybody can control the direction of a particular piece of software, so obviously it makes sense to make sure that say the Linux kernel can run on old crusty hardware, and of course it makes sense to port NetBSD to strange and obscure architectures. When software evolves according to the wishes of the people that use it, it's generally always gonna go in the direction for which they generally wish.

*) Notice I'm saying "corporate proprietary world", because I feel it's quite different from "corporate open source world", because Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 also run on my old AMD-K6 box!

[Wally Balljacker]

@ Troels

While I agree that Linux and BSD can be useful for extremely old hardware, I think you're diluting yourself a bit. All of the major FOSS software out there gradually requires newer and newer hardware. The desktops of today are obviously more feature-rich and powerful than the desktops of 1995 or 2000, and there is also a general trend towards moving away from arcane command-line only programs, towards intuitive and easy to use graphical applications as well. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Software evolves, as does hardware. It's the evolution of software that drives the development of faster and faster computers. It's a very reciprocal process, and I can tell you right now, if the entire PC game industry halted tomorrow, that would spell the end for newer, inexpensive commodity computer equipment.

[Tsuroerusu]

@ Troels

While I agree that Linux and BSD can be useful for extremely old hardware, I think you're diluting yourself a bit. All of the major FOSS software out there gradually requires newer and newer hardware. The desktops of today are obviously more feature-rich and powerful than the desktops of 1995 or 2000, and there is also a general trend towards moving away from arcane command-line only programs, towards intuitive and easy to use graphical applications as well. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Well, I was mostly referring to the operating systems themselves, which I probably should have stated. But even so, KDE 4.0 should be also run on pretty old hardware, I mean an 800 MHz Pentium 3 with like 256 MB of RAM is not new anymore, yet it's not something I would throw out. But think about this, I think KDE 3.0 came out in 2002, and now you have KDE 4.0 coming out in 2008 and requiring less resources than the 3.x series, I mean that at least to some degree legitimizes what I was saying. Oh well, Aaron Seigo is coming on the show in a few days, let's talk to him about it then.

Software evolves, as does hardware. It's the evolution of software that drives the development of faster and faster computers. It's a very reciprocal process, and I can tell you right now, if the entire PC game industry halted tomorrow, that would spell the end for newer, inexpensive commodity computer equipment.

Well, if that were to happen, some manufacturers would try to find other ways to make their hardware compelling, and maybe go back to the days when you got a big-ass manual with your graphics adapter to show you how to use the darn thing.
Yeah yeah, now I'm just day-dreaming, but hey!

[greggh]

SCO pretty much admits in it's latest SEC filing that they are worthless...

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?stor ... 0145030314

SCO has filed its 10K Annual Report for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2007. What a year it has been. They are down to 115 employees as of that date. Probably less now. They "anticipate a reduction in force as a result of Chapter 11 bankruptcy and in order to return to profitability". Uh huh. Product revenue is down 27%. They expect that to continue. They can't guarantee they'll make it out of Chapter 11. Those they owe money to could be left with nothing or almost nothing. Common shareholders are in the same boat, even if they do successfully implement a reorganization:

A plan of reorganization may result in holders of our common stock receiving no distribution on account of their interests and cancellation of their common stock....Therefore, an investment in our common stock is highly speculative.

You probably don't need a warning from SCO about the stock at this point.

Given their legal costs, a return to profitability might never come:

"As of October 31, 2007, we had a total of $5,554,000 in cash and cash equivalents and an additional $3,099,000 of restricted cash of which $1,833,000 to be used to pursue the SCO Litigation. Since October 31, 2004, we have spent a total of $13,167,000 for expert, consulting and other costs and fees as agreed to in the Engagement Agreement with our legal counsel in the SCO Litigation. Our limited cash resources may not be sufficient to fund continuing losses from operations and the expenses of the SCO Litigation."

SCOX is now trading at 6 cents with a market cap of just $1.32 million http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ig&q=OTC:SCOXQ